


The Living Dead

by jamesraoulsilva



Category: James Bond (Craig movies), James Bond (Movies), SPECTRE (2015), Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Day of the Dead, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-28
Updated: 2016-02-28
Packaged: 2018-05-23 17:36:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6124703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jamesraoulsilva/pseuds/jamesraoulsilva
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Día de Muertos in Mexico City turns out to be much more interesting than Bond had suspected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Living Dead

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sheila_Snow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sheila_Snow/gifts).



When MI6 finally release him from their inane and endless questioning and debriefing, a concerned Mallory staring through the one-way mirror during the entire process, Bond realises he has nowhere to go.

The files still say he’s KIA, and he lost his credit cards – somewhere in the world, perhaps in Turkey, perhaps in China, or anywhere in the maze of the city of London, his wallet is lying around, forgotten. Perhaps it sunk to the bottom of the lake on the moors, far up in the north.

By some miracle, his phone is still in his pocket, and it survived the plunge. Bond only notices this when he detects a faint buzz in his pocket, alerting him to a new email, but as he’s trekking through the city’s lesser-known pubs (which he leaves before the bar tenders are onto the fact he’s not paying), he dismisses it as one of the many imaginations or hallucinations that come to him in his state of advanced inebriation.

When it starts getting light again, and he’s been thrown out of a bar with the warning not to show his mug around there again, he decides he could just keep lying on the street. To hell with dignity.

Still, he avoids Mallory’s eyes when the Met officers deliver him to MI6.

Moneypenny pilots Bond through the buying of a flat, and lends him her computer. When he logs on to his email, he feels like he is plunged into an icy lake again.

 

\------------------------------

From: [m@sis.gov.uk](mailto:m@sis.gov.uk)  
To: [007@sis.gov.uk](mailto:007@sis.gov.uk)  
Subject: Fwd: In case of emergency  
Sent: Fri 23 Nov 2012 22:07:09  
1 attachment “i-c-o-e.mp4” (18,9 MB)

 

For your eyes only.

\------------------------------

 

M’s grey eyes pierce Bond’s – even from beyond the veil, from beyond a pixelated screen. “If anything happens to me, double-o seven, I need you to do something. Find a man called Marco Sciarra. Kill him. And don’t miss the funeral.”

                ***

Bond gets the feeling his nerve endings have been on fire since the moment his plane touched down at Mexico City International Airport – stranger after stranger passes him by, wearing calavera masks in celebration of Día de Muertos. In an attempt to blend in he decides to dress up and ensnares a charming young woman, Estrella.

When he walks through the doors opening out onto the balcony and hops onto the balustrade, readjusting his cufflinks, he feels his stomach tightening. Slinging the Glock 17 off his shoulder and unfolding the stock, he grabs the rifle firmly – the ingrained movements help him get into the right mindset.

It ought to be easy. Short distance, largely unobstructed view.

Without a second glance he jumps the distance between two buildings. If he falls, he’s dead.

Only, he doesn’t, and as he reaches the parapet behind which he takes cover, he checks his Glock. Seems to be in order. Not his favourite brand, but it ought to do.

Kneeling down, he aims carefully at Marco Sciarra’s head – when a scuffle to his right makes him raise his head and look right into the barrel of a sniper rifle, aimed between his eyes.

“James,” the masked man lilts. “I’m afraid I really can’t let you do that.”

Before Bond can respond, the man lifts his sniper onto his shoulder, looks through the ACOG scope, and pulls the trigger. Barely whipping his head round in time, Bond sees Sciarra drop down – dead.

Then the butt of the rifle cracks against his temple, and Bond follows Sciarra into the darkness – only his is not permanent.

When Bond opens his eyes again, he’s tied to a chair. The baroque-styled room he’s sitting in is barely lit – one lamp in a corner shines a faint light on the body of a woman lying on a thick plush carpet. A red spot with a black centre between her eyes defaces her otherwise beautiful features.

“Welcome back, James.”

The voice comes out of the darkness over Bond’s right shoulder, but Bond keeps staring at the dead woman.

“You’re looking at Lucia Sciarra, wife to our late friend Marco Sciarra.”

Bond swallows thickly – his tongue sticks to the roof of his dry mouth, and a headache dully pounds behind his eyes.

He feels like he should want to get the answers to all his questions, but in the three years since Skyfall went to ruins – and with it his past – the venom in his blood has dissipated. The emotion has gone.

“Her husband’s funeral is tomorrow. I’m sure you want to attend.”

And Silva – for Bond is beyond certain it is he – sounds like Bond feels: strangely detached.

It takes a second before it clicks, but of course it makes sense that Silva acquired access to Bond’s email and downloaded the video. And isn’t it strangely fitting – he doesn’t dare to think ‘fair’ – that M’s other lost son got to share in his part of her legacy, her inheritance?

No, Bond is not angry. He hardly has cause to be, because Sciarra is dead. Part 1 of M’s assignment has been completed. The only cause for revolt would be if Silva doesn’t let him go in time to attend the funeral.

“We’re in Rome now, by the way. You’ve been out for a while.”

Movement in the corner of his right eye. As a pale king emerging from the mist, so does Silva enter the light. He’s wearing a dark-coloured suit – in the dimness, Bond cannot discern the actual colour.

Silva walks to a table on which a tidy liquor collection has proudly been flaunted by its former owners. He picks up some bottles.

“Lagavulin… Glenfiddich… Hmm.”

He pours a glass of a third bottle and Bond lifts his gaze, finally, to watch the muscles in his back work under the tailored suit jacket.

When Silva turns around, Bond can’t avoid his eyes from narrowing.

He hardly changed – the only additions to his face are deeper-running crow’s feet and a pale scar running over his right cheek.

Bond juts his chin outward. “That’s new,” he says bluntly.

In an unrepressed movement of familiar vanity of a time long lost, Silva lets index and middle finger run over the faint pink line.

It remains at that, by way of answer.

Silva takes a sip. Behind him, Bond recognises the label on the uncapped bottle – Macallan.

Whether this is cosmic irony or an impossible coincidence, Bond cannot tell.

But he told no one he was going to Mexico City.

“You must’ve thought I died,” Silva says, suddenly, unprovoked. He sounds like a mentor talking to a student – infinite rivers of patience.

“Burned alive,” he adds calmly.

Bond glances up sharply.

“And yet, while my remains weren’t found, you didn’t pursue me.” Silva cocks his head.

“I must admit I felt a little disappointed at first. I thought that, after licking your wounds and recuperating, MI6 would have you open the manhunt on me. I have been wondering why that hasn’t been the case.

“When I heard on the grapevine that you were looking for Sciarra, I thought you finally made the connection between him and Le Chiffre.”

When Bond raises an eyebrow, Silva laughs incredulously.

“Really? Le Chiffre was his financier, between 2003 and 2005. Someone—” Silva taps his temple lightly “—suggested he pull out his money before you came along and plunged our dear Le Chiffre into bankruptcy and despair.

“It was an oversight on my part that I didn’t look into your email earlier. So, James, tell me – do you know the reason why we’re going to attend Mr Sciarra’s funeral tomorrow?”

Bond’s silence, he’s sure, tells Silva all he needs to know.

Sighing, Silva pulls a chair from a dark corner and sits down, opposite Bond.

He’s close – the smell of his cologne drifts on the air.

A smile plays around the corner of Silva’s mouth when he wedges a knee between Bond’s legs.

“You’re even more silent than last time,” Silva quips. “Are you still puzzling it out?”

Bond meets Silva’s expectant gaze, the only sign of having heard him being a mirrored smile on his own lips.

“… Or should I be worried about your psychological evaluations again? Did MI6 blunt you? I’m afraid I haven’t got your files at hand, this time.”

Bond reflexively tests the strength of the knots tying him to the chair – they seem to be of frustratingly excellent quality.

“I do miss that machine gun-toting bloke,” Bond says.

“I fear I’ll have to contend tonight.”

Something in Silva’s tone of voice raises the hairs in Bond’s neck. Only then there’s a sound from outside, and Bond doesn’t trust his reaction anymore – doesn’t know whether his arousal is caused by the adrenaline, or his captor.

His gaze sweeps the room only to rest on Silva’s eyes again, who has turned his head slightly in the direction of the sound.

Bond raises both his eyebrows. _Is this you?_ he hopes to convey.

Silva shakes his head – the movement minute, but simultaneously his hand slides into his jacket and he pulls out a Sig Sauer.

Bond sets his jaw and jerks his chin towards himself. He sees a flicker of uncertainty cross Silva’s face – the urgency of the situation, reinforced by a louder noise, like someone jiggling the lock on a door, appears to make Silva resolute, however, and his hand disappears behind Bond’s chair. The hissing sound of a knife clicking open and cutting through the fibers, for a second – and Bond is free.

Silva listens very closely for a moment, then kneels down besides Lucia Sciarra’s body and lifts her up. Bond stands up and exchanges places with her. Silva brushes her hair in front of her face, then joins Bond behind the chair.

Bond is blinded by the sudden rush of his blood from his brain to his feet – swaying slightly, he buries his nails in the palms of his hand to focus, focus. Another surge of adrenaline.

A moment more marks the time for Silva to slide Bond’s Walther into his hand. Silva reaches for the light switch, but Bond stops him with a raising of his left hand. He beckons Silva and they slide back into the darkness, each on different sides of the double doors that, Bond supposes, lead to a hallway.

Silva screws a silencer on the Sig Sauer, with an expression of concentration. The same goes for Bond, and with the Walther in his hand, his breathing steadies – while he feels blood whizzing in his ears, again.

He thumbs the hammer lightly and when another sound erupts from the hallway, followed by a hushing noise, he pulls it down, and sees rather than hears Silva doing the same. Their eyes lock for a moment, and an unspoken negotiation is agreed on – an ambush.

 

When the doors open, a shaft of light penetrates the room, and Bond only now realises just how dark it was in there. He flattens himself against the wall, barely breathing.

A hand, the veins on it standing out, pushes the door open further. Then an arm, and the barrel of a handgun – before a man enters, and Bond sees another behind him.

“Signora Sciarra,” he hears the second man whisper.

A split second before Bond can wrap his arm around the neck of the first, Silva does – and shoots him, the muffled _whoosh_ of the silenced flight an illusion of the deadly power of the gun.

Bond bats aside the second man’s armed hand, twists his arm so hard he thinks he hears the elbow snap, holds him, and kicks at the man’s right knee. Before he can scream, Silva has already put a bullet between his eyes.

The man – the man’s _corpse_ – is propelled backwards by the force of the bullet and Bond lets him fall.

Bond turns to look at Silva, whose face is a blank.

He had thought Silva would want to question either one of them before killing them, but he supposes it’s not very hard to guess they came here to depose of _Signora_ Sciarra before she could give away any of her husband’s secrets.

Too late, now.

Bond raises his gun at Silva.

**Author's Note:**

> Dear sheilasnow, I'm sorry this is as of now so short - real life whooped my ass, but I WILL continue your gift.


End file.
